Chapter 9: Staffing Levels

Chapter 10: Integrating Inspection and Degradation Strategies A Launch Pad for a Bigger Reliability Initiative

Chapter 11: Technician Training Challenge

Chapter 12: Competence Profiles Rice Farmer or World Expert?

Chapter 13: Operators and Maintainers

Chapter 14: Building a Reliability Culture

Chapter 15: Managing Surplus Staff

Chapter 16: Retraining Surplus Staff

When I first started work, I had no computer and I shared a telephone with six other engineers. I had a real-time information service in the form of an engineering clerk; I also had over a hundred employees with a bevy of foremen. As I progressed through my career, I have acquired a computer and a telephone of my own. I lost my real-time engineering clerk and the number of people reporting to me has shrunk every year. Indeed for most of my career, how many people I could get rid of each year and still get the job done seemed to be the most important factor in setting my salary increase.

What I have learned over the years about staffing levels is that:

• Doing unnecessary work unproductively requires a horde of people, but

• Doing only the necessary work efficiently requires amazingly few people.

In addition, running a lean, mean, empowered type of operation focused on the things that matter brings:

• High...